Exclusive: The true story behind FDU-Inkingi’s Joseph Ntawangundi revealed

KIGALI - When Victoire Ingabire’s assistant, Joseph Ntawangundi, was arrested on a pending Gacaca warrant, she was the first to cry foul. Ntawangundi was found guilty of Genocide and sentenced to 19 years by a Gacaca court in the Eastern Province in 2007. He was accused of killing and causing the deaths of students under his care while serving as the headmaster of a school in the former Commune Rukira. In a deliberate move to portray that her yet-to-be-registered political party, FDU-Inkingi, was a victim of government harassment, Ingabire immediately issued a statement refuting the accusations.She argued that: - Ntawangundi never worked in the education sector, meaning that he never served as a headmaster at the school in question; - The accused left the country in 1992 to work with the International Confederation of Free Trade Union African Regional Organisation ICFTU- AFRO in Nairobi and was not in Rwanda during the Genocide. Contact FM, in collaboration with The New Times, reveal the true story in a well researched investigative report.During the investigation, we spoke to members of the Baptist Church (AEBR) who recruited Ntawangundi to head the school, the driver of a truck that transported him with his property from his residence in Kacyiru to Rukira, a former student, as well as his former mistress with whom they fled to Benaco refugee camp in Tanzania in 1994. Finally, ICFTU- AFRO, who moved their headquarters from Nairobi to Lome, Togo, reveal that Ntawangundi’s records start from 2000, and not 1993 as FDU’s Ingabire claims. Contact FM will begin airing the first part of the investigation tonight while our readers will get the full report in tomorrow’s (Tuesday) issue of The New Times. Ends

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Exclusive: The true story behind FDU-Inkingi’s Joseph Ntawangundi revealed